Farah Art Griffin

Farah Art Griffin is a first-generation American poet and visual artist who grew up in the public school system. In her early childhood, she had a stroke. After tests and assessments in 2016 to explore the possibility of a learning disability, Farah found out that the difficulties she has had with her handwriting and studies since grade school were actually due to a lifelong residual from her stroke, which caused impairment in the fine motor skills of her right hand.

In an effort to focus on keeping her right hand more in use, she began creating art. With a very fragile and compassionate heart, Farah gently creates her art pieces and writes her poems through an examination of suffering and oppression.

Farah is the recipient of the Arts and Accessibility Grant from the National Arts & Disability Center for her art piece "Abused and Bullied: My Captivity," the Library Travel Grant Award from the University of Chicago's Center for East Asian Studies and the Countering Hate with Art Grant for her art piece "The Internment of Our Humanity," the Wake Forest University Travel Grant for Library Research Award for her art piece "Open Wounds: Enslavement of a Precious Being," and the Harvardwood Heroes Grant for her art piece "The Burn of Acid is No One’s Honor." In addition, she was named a Zwickler Fellow at Cornell University for her art piece "Bleeding for Equality" and a Charleston Research Fellow at the College of Charleston for her art piece "Holocaust of Our Beloved: More Than a Number." She is a recipient of the Tending Space Fellowship for Artists from the Hemera Foundation and the Relief Fund for L.A. County Visual Artists Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. "The Internment of Our Humanity" is part of the permanent collection of the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum.

Farah's poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Pleiades, The American Journal of Poetry, Arkansas Review, Good River Review, Constellations, Storm Cellar, Tipton Poetry Journal, Iron Horse Literary Review, Poetry South, The Perch, Plexus, The New Verse News, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational, and elsewhere, and was featured in exhibition in the North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival. Support for her literary work includes a grant from the Writers Happiness Movement and the Altman Writers of Color Scholarship from the Hudson Valley Writers Center. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of South Carolina and a master's degree in Arts in Education from Harvard University. After five years of mutism, Farah regained her voice in the summer of 2022.